Olive Impulse deal still on cards

Olive managing director Mark Geraghty said Olive’s proposed £2 million takeover of Impulse music stores, based in many airports and train stations in the UK, was still very much alive.

"The deal is not dead; it has been delayed because we have had to focus ourattentions on the present issues. We are still very much in discussions with Impulse, but there is no immediate hurry to get it done in the coming weeks.

Olive is on the verge of a deal with a private investor that will see it raise more than £1 million for customer retention following the termination of its T-Mobile contract.

Olive, which intends to sue T-Mobile for £800,000 in lost revenues and £640,000 in unpaid commission, reckons it can churn 50 per cent of its T-Mobile customers to rival networks with new investment. It has 25,000 T-Mobile customers.

T-Mobile refused to comment.

Olive said it will use the capital to pay out the remainder of customers’ T-Mobile contracts.

Geraghty said Olive will "fight T-Mobile all the way".

He said: "We will get back a large percentage of those customers.

"We connected on average more than a thousand customers per month on T-Mobile every month, and T-Mobile have historically struggled with B2B connections in the past so I find it all very hard to believe."

He added: "It’s about rebuilding again, we have more than 10,000 customers on other networks and within 18 months I think we will have at least 25,000."

Geraghty reckoned T-Mobile will lose a £8million a year in revenues if Olive’s mass customer port is successful.

"I don’t see how sacrificing £8 million a year is good business for T-Mobile."

Olive said 250 of its largest business customers had already pledged to stay with Olive.

Olive is a gold partner with Vodafone service provider Yes Telecom and expects a "large chunk" of its customer base to move to Vodafone.